Mack Reynolds - Once Departed

“Yes,” Quint said sourly. “He’s connected with the police all right, all right. And possibly others as well.”

She frowned at him, her hand on the doorknob. “Just what are you two here for, Quentin? I know there’s something very romantically mysterious going on.”

“If you find out,” Mike grumbled, “let us know. I think we’re kidding ourselves. Pardon me, I suspect there’s a drink in there.” He went through the door into the buffeting noise beyond.

“Anybody missing?” Quint asked her. She was standing close to him and looking up, half anxiously, half as though expecting something. Inwardly, he sighed. Was he being a heel with this girl? And, if so, in what manner? In not giving her what she obviously wanted? Or in not rebuffing her, and letting her get on to someone who would appreciate all the accumulated affection she seemed to have on tap.

He put an arm around her, quickly, tilted her chin up with a finger, and kissed her lips. As before, they were drawn stiffly together, and what he had thought the other night, came back to him. A maiden’s kiss, or the loss of an older person, for long years out of practice. Perhaps he’d get around to teaching her. What did either of them have to lose? The girl was attractive, but probably pushing thirty. There comes a time in a woman’s life when she stops bragging about her virginity—or should.

She said stiffly, “Quentin… you’re not just leading me on?” Her voice was very low.

’That’s what I was thinking of doing,” he said wryly. “How’d you guess?”

She misinterpretated. “I… I don’t know very much about such things.”

“I was beginning to suspect that,” he said.

Her voice was so low now as hardly to be made out. “I was spoofing when I told you I’d had lots of beaux.”

“I kind of guessed that too.”

It was then she set him back. She said, “I realize I’ve been too prim for a man like you, Quentin. If… well, if you wish to stay, after… after the party.”

He stared down at her. Marylyn Worth? Was he getting this correctly? Or was it just his naturally evil mind?

“Why Marylyn!”

He could feel her body retracting, growing smaller right there in his arms, and was immediately contrite. It hadn’t been easy for the girl to say that.

“Listen, pet,” he told her. “You think about it a bit more. You want to be awfully sure about these things.”

“I’m… I’m pretty sure.” Her body shivered in his hold. He let go of her and turned to lead the way into the other room.

Quint said, “You didn’t tell me if everyone was already here.”

She had evidently regained composure. “I think they are. It was rather difficult, even with Mike’s and Ferd and Marty’s help, to decide just who had been at their party. They’re so, well, madcap.” She looked up at him and smiled brightly, as though to reassure him. “Could I get you a drink?”

“I’ll find it,” he said. “You’ve probably got hostess duties.”

He made his way to the improvised bar, on a large Castilian type table, and began to pour himself a stiff brandy. He remembered in time and cut it short, and then added ice and water. Let the others get swacked tonight, he and Mike had to be careful.

Jose Garcia’s voice said next to him, “Well, chum, any developments?”

He turned to the Spaniard. “I just got here, Senor Garcia.”

The other looked at him, his mouth twisted ruefully. He said, finally, “Joe, to you.”

Quint hadn’t expected that. He scowled at the smaller man. Garcia said, “Look here, Quint. The world is changing, and changing fast, and largely for the better. What new changes take place in the next ten years, who can say? If we don’t blow ourselves up, in the meantime, it should be a rather good world in another decade or two. Fewer people starving, more people feeling secure about the future. All that. Some parts of the world are moving faster than others, but things are developing on both sides of the Iron Curtain and…” he twisted his mouth again “… even in such countries as Spain. Maybe in my country things aren’t moving as fast as a lot of us would like—including me. But moving they are, and the speed is accelerating.”

It was Quint Jones’ turn to be rueful. “Okay, Joe, take that I’m sorry we’ve been ruffling each other’s fur. And good luck to you… and your country. In a way, I’m sorry to be leaving it.”

“I’m sorry to see you go,” Garcia said. He hesitated. “Actually, its not in my hands. That persona non grata thing. Perhaps in another couple of years or so…”

“I’ll be back,” Quint said.

Without further word, the Spaniard turned and left.

Quint didn’t have the time to speculate about the other’s words. Joe Garcia wasn’t as bad as all that, he supposed. But then, few people are, when you get inside them.

He drifted from one group to another. Most of them were talking about the killings. Rumors were sifting through Madrid, in spite of all police efforts to hold the lid on. An apprehension was obviously growing. The story was leaking through that the bodies of the murdered had been brutally mutilated.

He listened to a group Dave Shepherd was talking to. The expatriate homosexual was breathless. “You’ll never believe this,” he said. “But my dears, I’ve heard that…” he held his breath dramatically for a moment “… Martin Bormann is suspected of being here in Madrid.”

One of the others, already tight, and in a voice that Quint thought he recognized from the party at Dempsey’s, slurred, “Who the hell’s Mart Bordeom?”

Shepherd squelched him with a look of disdain. “Bormann!” he said. “Hitler’s right hand man.”

“Oh Hitler, for christssake. Damn shame we killed that guy. We could use him now. Fighting the damn reds.”

“Oh, shut up,” a feminine voice said.

Quint wandered on. He wasn’t going to learn anything from Dave Shepherd’s group. They were hardly at the beginning of things.

Mike Woolman had evidently tried to get a controversy going by bringing up Nicolas Ferencsik and the fact that he had disappeared and the further fact that he had been an authority on organ transplanting. He tried to get them talking about the possibility that the mutilated corpses and the controversial Hungarian might be connected, but it didn’t seem to get through with only hints. He would have had to club them over the head with a flat out statement.

However, Quint stood there for a time and listened. One of the other guests was a Rumanian refugee and the talk evolved into a discussion of Anna Asian and her Vitamin H3. The Rumanian was quite excited about the experiments in the old age clinics.

Doctor Asian brought this senile vagabond in off the streets. The man must have been at least ninety. They had no records of him at all. His mind was gone beyond the point where he knew about relatives or friends, or even what town he had come from. Doctor Asian began her injections and other treatment Within a month, his gray hair had begun to turn black. He was able to feed himself and take care of his bodily needs. In two months he was walking without a cane, through the hospital grounds. Eventually, they threw away his glasses. He didn’t need them. And, most unbelievable of all, they had found a job for him, in industry, and he was leading a normal life.”

Somebody said in great disbelief, “A normal life of a man how old?”

The Rumanian threw up his hands in a gesture more Gallic than Balkan. “Of a man perhaps sixty. He even had a sex life.”

Still someone else growled, “But it doesn’t seem to work on everyone.”

Quint drifted on, his face in scowl. It brought back something to him. Early in this affair he had scoffed at the idea of Hitler—had he still been alive—being a menace any longer. He would have been too old. But if this Doctor Asian in Rumania had succeeded in retarding age, and even turning it back, why couldn’t that have been done to Hitler, or, more likely, Martin Bormann? Why indeed? Professor Ferencsik had hinted that he knew how to keep his projected superman in all but everlasting youth.